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Chapter 9: Be the Formless in You

A woman and a man making love.man exhausts himself; woman is enriched, nourished, because she is at the receptive end. Making love, a man loses energy, a woman gains it. That’s why women have been suppressed all over the world. If they were not suppressed the man would be killed: it would become impossible for any man to satisfy any woman. Now, modern researchers say that women have multiple orgasms. A woman can make love to one dozen people in one night and still feel fresh, full of energy. A man can make love only once, and then he is exhausted. Man throws energy out, woman takes energy in. The same has to happen with God.

The Bauls say, “Become feminine, become passive.” But remember, when they say become passive they don’t mean to become lazy. To be lazy is also the same as to be active. Lazy is not passive. He may not be doing anything, but in his mind he goes on doing. He may not be actually doing anything, but he goes on doing many things in the mind - even more so, because the whole energy is available and he has nothing do. He goes on thinking and doing things in the mind; that activity remains.

Passivity does not mean inactivity, it means a very expectant patience, a very active patience, alive patience. The lazy man is dull; the lazy man is simply dead. Passivity is not deadness. It is fully alive: the reservoir is full of energy, but not going anywhere, not going on any search, just waiting for the Beloved to come.

That’s why women never take any initiative in love affairs - they cannot. If a woman takes the initiative in the love affair, then she must be a part of the “lib movement.” Then she is losing her womanhood somehow. They wait: the initiative has to come from the man. The woman waits - not that she doesn’t love, she loves tremendously; no man can love that deeply - but she waits. She trusts that things will happen in their right time, and hurrying is not good. A woman is non-tense but full of energy, hence the feminine beauty. The roundness of the feminine body is not only a physical thing - the same is so in her psychology also. She has a round shape, smooth, warm, ready to dissolve, but not aggressive. Passivity means non-aggressiveness, nonviolence. It is not laziness.

I have heard..

The Swiss people, especially those from their capital, Berne, are said to be as slow as snails. One day two Berner friends went out for a walk. After one hour one said, “Christmas is beautiful.”

Another hour passed when his friend answered, “Yes, and love is beautiful too.”

After a long while the first answered, “You are right but Christmas is more often.”

One can be so lazy that Christmas is more often than lovemaking. Laziness is a sort of stagnancy. Laziness is lustlessness; laziness is suicide - slow, very slow. So remember, passivity is not negation of energy. Passivity is a reservoir of energy - vibrant, throbbing streaming, ready to receive, but non-aggressive.

It happened:

A Sufi mystic was sitting under a tree. A passerby told him, “What are you doing here? Your house is on fire.” Just in front of him the house was on fire.